BECOMING PASSE

Or, continuing to live as a baby boomer. Rather than not living. What else can we do? Probably in junior high, the following were two of my beliefs: one, that the farsidedness of middle age would neutralize my nearsidedness, and glasses would not be needed by me anymore. Two, that (once realizing how BIG the baby boomer generation was) numbers would trump youth. It would be cool to be old, because there were so many of us. Wrong.

In America, there is nothing that trumps youth.

And it is only now that my brain has formed opinion based on knowledge and not impulse. Having taught for many years, many holes in my early education have been plugged. Oh, there are still some. Reading now “The Count of Monte Christo“, the laptop sitting next to me prompts me on the smaller details of the French Revolution, the Hundred Days, that kind of stuff. I welcome it to the slurry in my brain. And there is so much more reading to do.

Now that I can think, no one will hear.

This is a notebook created by Charles Dellschau, an object of beauty even before opening. Look at the play of the lines on the edges of of the pages against one another. Thank you, “Infinite Art Tournament” for giving up this image (but not for placing artists against one another in a boxing ring). That is why we are artists. You cannot pick a “rookie of the year” in art. Or ” most valuable player”.

This man’s work was never shown other to members of his secret club. A club made of men interested in flying machines.

He died in 1923. So these books represent a then current interest, many were thinking about this. The Wright Bros. flight was December 17, 1903. Successful flights were conducted before this time, but without the tools for power over the aircraft. And maybe those others did not create their image carefully enough. They didn’t tweet.

Look at these amazing images: bold, detailed, personal, parts using a private language, and give clues to real events. Ah, my students will say “symmetry is not the most interesting of the methods of balance”, but I give this man a break. Just like James Hampton. If anybody can emblazen symmetry like these two, I am on their side. Don’t get me going on the detail and subtlety that counteracts the strong symmetry.

James Hampton

This looks like a textile. Maybe that is what draws me to this work. The drawing looks like stitches, and he does significant work with borders in these drawings, like a quilt would have.

But textiles are now passe. In the 1970’s with the liberation of women and political issues that went along with the cause, “punching holes” in what a textile was was liberating. Who did most of the textiles? Repetitive, mundane, small and not splashy, women did them. They stitched in their energy.

Textiles are now passe, but they still represent women my age, those who passed through those times. Now other media are more interesting. Stuff relevant to 2013: technology, and making stuff out of what we throw away.